The Anglican Church has experienced a very gradual erosion of its majority status in the population. Nominal Anglicans were 53 per cent of the Australian population in 1851, 44 per cent in 1921, and in 1986 only 24 per cent, which was second to the Roman Catholics. The numerical and assumed superiority of the Church of England and its establishmentarian ethos have given a peculiarly Anglican atmosphere to Australian Protestantism, making it very different in character from, for example, American Protestantism.

When the English fleet defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588, the Anglican Church permanently replaced the Catholic one in England.

Other reformers of historical note were the Puritans. They claimed that the Anglican Church was too close to the Catholic Church. They were called Puritans because they wanted to purify the Church of England. They wanted a complete separation of church and state.